


huddled in the wind

by helloearthlings



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, During Canon, Gen, Missing Persons, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 17:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16957992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helloearthlings/pseuds/helloearthlings
Summary: “Hey, Sammy?” Larry says, his voice a little lower pitched than usual, and more uncertain. “I just wanted to say. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you before from – from Shotgun Saturday Nights.”“Oh,” Sammy says, the air going out of him. He hadn’t expected that. Talking about Shotgun is always anxiety inducing, but Larry at least is going to be kind about it, so Sammy tries his best to smile up at him. “Honestly, I’m glad you didn’t. Like I said – I’ve…I’ve changed a lot since then.”Almost too much, Sammy can’t help but think in the back of his head, but Larry bites his lip.“Not just that,” Larry says softly. “I mean – Jack Wright.”





	huddled in the wind

**Author's Note:**

> So basically - if Dan and Larry were on Shotgun Saturday Nights, Jack sure as hell was the one who booked them. Hence this fic sprang into existence bc Larry is a Good Bean and we do stan. 
> 
> This is set between Desperate Times and Desperate Measures (Oct 2017). Hope you like it!!!

Sammy not sure when he zones completely out of reality as he sits at the bar in Rose’s Diner chugging his fourth cup of coffee, drowning in even more regret and guilt than usual, and exhausted out of his mind after doing four hours alone last night. The last five nights.

Ben hasn’t been picking up his calls, and Sammy is too much of a coward to go knocking on Ben’s door. He knows he deserves this after keeping what he did from Ben, but the acerbic jabs of Ben’s anger sting all the same, and Ben being angry with him never won’t remind him of Jack in those last few weeks, when Sammy had been shut out completely.  

At least this time, Sammy knew exactly why Ben is so angry at him. And he understands it, too.  

“Sugar, you might wanna slow down on that coffee,” Rose peers at Sammy through her horn-rimmed glasses, raising a penciled eyebrow. “You sure I can’t get you any pancakes?”

“I’m sure,” Sammy says, voice cracking. He knows it’s giving out. That’s what happens when you talk to yourself for four hours a night.

“Not even something to take for Benny?” Rose says, all sweetness and concern, but it just makes Sammy’s stomach turn.

“No,” he admits, looking at the table, and takes another gulp of coffee. It’s hard to swallow.

“Can’t think of nobody that wouldn’t forgive a face like that,” Rose leans over the counter to pinch Sammy’s cheek. Sammy leans away, but he laughs to give her the satisfaction even though he can’t think of any real reason why he deserves to laugh right now.

Sammy doesn’t notice when the door jingles, and only looks up when someone taps his shoulder.

“Hey there, Sammy!”

It’s Larry, his bright and freckled face as cheerful as ever, and he enthusiastically reaches over to pump Sammy’s hand. Sammy knows his grip is far too lax but all he’s had to eat in the past five days are pop tarts and coffee, and he can’t really bring himself to tighten it.

Seeing Larry just reminds Sammy of the night Mission Apparition was in studio, and Sammy’s already reminded enough of that by all the voicemails he’s left, all the unread text messages that he’s sent, and the furious wall of Ben’s silence.

“Hey, Larry,” Sammy does his best to match Larry’s cheerfulness. It’s not his fault that Sammy’s a fucking mess, and it’s not his fault that Dan happens to be the most annoying asshole on television, perfectly engineered to rile Ben up. “Where’s your worse half?”

Larry chuckles a little uncomfortably, but the smile he gives Sammy is genuine. “Dan’s out in the van. We’re headed out of town and he sent me in to get pancake puppies for the road. We just love the food here, y’know? Better than any other small town diner.”

“Can’t argue with you there,” Sammy says, and thinks that when Larry steps away to place his order with Rose, it’s the end of the conversation, but Larry appears at his shoulder again as soon as he’s through with Rose.

“How’d the…thing at Mr. Sheffield’s place go?” Sammy asks, not quite willing to call it a haunting. It seems like more than that.

Larry shakes his head, his eyes wide. “I really couldn’t say, bud. We did all of our usual tricks, but – well – nothing happened. It seems like just an ordinary house to me. Dan’s real mad that it wasn’t season finale material.”

“Guess the apparitions outsmarted Dan this time,” Sammy says, even though that worries him, everything being ordinary. It’s the way it should be and yet – there had been _something_ about Cecil’s house that night.

Larry, unlike Dan, can take a joke, and laughs. “You know, it happens more than you’d think.”

“Not likely,” Sammy tries for joking again, finding a rhythm in it. He can laugh, he can be funny, he can pretend everything’s fine.

Larry changes the rules immediately though, and his face turns somber in the next second.

He reaches out hesitantly and puts a hand on Sammy’s shoulder. For a moment, Sammy thinks he learned somehow about his and Ben’s fight, and a flash of foreboding goes through his chest.

“Hey, Sammy?” Larry says, his voice a little lower pitched than usual, and more uncertain. “I just wanted to say. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you before from – from Shotgun Saturday Nights.”

“Oh,” Sammy says, the air going out of him. He hadn’t expected that. Talking about Shotgun is always anxiety inducing, but Larry at least is going to be kind about it, so Sammy tries his best to smile up at him. “Honestly, I’m glad you didn’t. Like I said – I’ve…I’ve changed a lot since then.”

Almost too much, Sammy can’t help but think in the back of his head, but Larry bites his lip.

“Not just that,” Larry says softly. “I mean – Jack Wright.”

Sammy stares. No one’s ever said Jack’s name to him before, out loud, in this town. Not even Lily. It makes him feel lightheaded, like he might fall over, like he might vomit, like he might sob, like he might just spill everything right now, to Larry fucking Bennett Ghostbuster, in Rose’s Diner of all places.

“I’d forgotten that he was your producer until Dan started bitching about you on the car ride the other night – and he mentioned Jack,” Larry says, almost wringing his hands, his eyes wide and anxious. “I – he was such a great guy, Sammy. A great producer too, I bet. I just wanted to say I’m sorry about – about what happened. I was a big fan of his writing, I still have his book.”

Sammy finds it hard to think, let alone talk, and his mind is simultaneously racing with possibilities and is incapable of moving at all, slow and dead and meaningless like time has slowed to a stop.

Sammy clears his throat to give himself another couple seconds. “I’m guessing you mean _Jump Scare_ and not _An Introduction to Radio Broadcast Techniques_.”

“Yeah, that one!” Larry beams, even though there’s sadness still lurking behind his smile. “I loved it. It was so dry and funny but always took itself so seriously. Most people who write about ghosts take it all as a joke. Or they take it seriously as a story, but always with the caveat that it can’t be real. I loved how Jack would parse out one of those old historical anecdotes, and really search for corroborating evidence He’d call bullshit, but he’d also always look for the ways it could be legit. And in the modern stories, analyzing how technology changes how we think about the nostalgic past and the inevitable future of death? I got chills, man.”

Miraculously, Sammy doesn’t break down as Larry talks, though he feels hot tears forming behind his eyes that he had to blink back.

It’s not that Sammy blames _Jump Scare –_ fuck, the book had been half-finished back when they lived in Florida, even if Jack hadn’t found a publisher until they moved to Los Angeles. But if Jack hadn’t gotten critical acclaim for _Jump Scare_ he wouldn’t have gotten that second book deal, the one that started this whole fucking mess in the first place. Because Jack knew right away what he wanted to write that book about.

 “He’d – he would’ve loved to hear it,” Sammy manages to get out. Jack would’ve loved to sit down with Larry and talk about his book. His eyes would light up when someone asked him about his research, when someone really seemed to care, seemed to believe in the same things he did. “He was a fan of yours, too. Watched your show. It was his idea – his idea to book you guys for Shotgun.”

“I’m real flattered,” Larry says quietly, his eyes soft and his mouth drawn in a small frown. “When I heard about what happened to him – I’m _so_ sorry, it’s an awful story. I was talking to his sister about it, when I met her a month or two back?”

Sammy feels too hot and too small for his skin. It’s bad enough that Lily put Jack’s name in her show, bad enough that Sammy knows Ben listened to it, Emily listened to it, Ron and Tim and Mary and all of Sammy’s friends knew Jack Wright’s name now.

They probably thought it was a sad story, a shame, too bad – Sammy’s always wondered if Ben’s read Jack’s book, has been waiting for Ben to bring it up out of the blue but he never has.

They knew Jack’s name. They knew Lily’s story.

None of them _knew._

Larry didn’t know either, but at least he knew that _Jack Wright_ was a name that came on the credits next to _Sammy Stevens._

“Ms. Wright said no one ever found another a trace of him,” Larry says, shuddering. “Just an awful thing to happen. I’m glad I ran into you – I would’ve felt awful bad if I left town without getting to say I’m sorry.”

Sammy tries to think of something else to say. _Jack made me watch your show every Sunday. He’d record it if we had a work thing. He’d try to sneak up on me and scare me if he left the room to get food, and he usually could. I knew something was wrong when stopped recording it, when he stopped caring about anything that wasn’t King fucking Falls. Not even his new book – he didn’t care about that anymore. Just King Falls. Always King Falls. Have you seen him? Have you seen anything that could be him?_

Sammy swallows as hard as he can and tries to say something that approaches genuine, because Larry is one of the nicer people’s Sammy’s met in his life, and Sammy just had a conversation about Jack, a real conversation, for the first time in years. It feels like Jack’s real again outside his own head, the same as when Lily got to town.

But Lily hated him. Those weren’t conversations _about_ Jack, they were – they were conversations about pain and trauma and history, but not Jack.  

 “I appreciate it,” Sammy says, putting as much kindness into his voice as he could. It’s true – Ben hasn’t spoken to Sammy for five days and it makes Sammy feel like he’s drowning, but Larry talked about Jack Wright and it didn’t kill Sammy to hear his name. “It was…really nice talking, Larry. I hope you have a good trip home, and that Dan isn’t too obnoxious.”

Larry cracks a real smile at that, even if it comes with an eye roll. “Well, you know Dan.”

“Unfortunately,” Sammy says, and they both laugh. Sammy’s surprised to find that it comes out a little more naturally now. Maybe he needed to hear Jack’s name.

“I just – before I go,” Larry says, nodding when he sees Rose set a stack of to-go cartons on the counter not too far. “I mentioned this to Ms. Wright, but – after he disappeared, I reread the book. I mean, everyone was talking about him again, it was on all the news sites. And there was that one line of his that I loved in the epilogue – _History is a ghost story. Someday we’ll be ghosts, too.”_

Sammy nods shakily, and he feels his hand twitch involuntary. He hates that line. He proofread for Jack and told him it was a cliché, and a morbid one at that. Jack had laughed at him and kept it in. _Just to spite you, babe_.

“You can hate me for saying this, but – I dunno, he didn’t seem sad about that possibility. He seemed happy,” Larry shrugs, looking apologetic as he scuffs his shoes on the floor. “I mean, it’s awful that he’s gone but – I mean, someone could write a ghost story about him someday, you know? I know I barely knew him, but I think he would’ve liked that.”

“Did Lily threaten to kill you for saying that?” Sammy manages to get out and Larry blushes.

“She may have mentioned castration,” Larry admits. “But I thought – well – I was just trying to be kind. And you looked so sad sitting there on your own – like you maybe needed some kindness, and might be more willin’ to accept that Ms. Wright. I know it’s been a long time since you and Jack worked together but – but that’s not an easy thing to get over. And I remember you were there when it happened, that you put the call into the police – it’s not easy, is all I’m saying. And I’m sorry you went through it.”

Sammy bites his lip. He doesn’t cry, even though he wants to, even though he wants to hug Larry and tell him thank you, even though he wants to punch Larry in the face for ever thinking he has the right to talk about Jack like he knew him, even though –

Even though Sammy is alone, and desperate, and has alienated his best friend maybe for the last time. Even though it feels like he’s breaking more every day and no one’s noticed except some goofy Ghostbuster who knows Jack’s name.

“You’re right,” Sammy says, doing his best to smile, and he thinks Larry can tell how close Sammy is to tears. “Jack would’ve liked it. Being a ghost story.”

Larry nods, his smile subtle but still there, and he takes his food off the counter and awkwardly waves his hand at Sammy as he backpedals toward the door.

“Thanks for having us on the show,” Larry says. “We’ll see you next time we’re in town – maybe on a more cheerful subject, huh?”

“I’ll buy you some pancake puppies,” Sammy says without thinking about it, and Larry grins on his way out the door.

Sammy’s almost sorry to see him go. Now he has to return to this life – where Jack’s just a name on Lily’s show that Sammy’s not supposed to recognize.

“I didn’t know you were friends with the Mission Apparatus boys,” Rose says when she wanders back in Sammy’s direction a moment later. She clucks her tongue approvingly at him, probably for interacting with something that wasn’t another cup of black coffee.

“I didn’t know I was either,” Sammy says, shrugging at her as she grins. He holds up his cup and Rose’s grin turns into a disapproving grimace.

“Only if you order some food,” Rose says, stern like Sammy imagines a grandmother would scold their irritating grandson. “Caffeine on an empty stomach ain’t gonna feel too hot in a couple hours, sugar. Pancakes on the house today. And maybe you can take some leftovers to Benny.”

Sammy nods, knowing that he can’t escape the mothering, and Rose beams at him.

Maybe Sammy will stop by Ben’s apartment. Just to try and see if Ben’s willing to talk.

He won’t be, Sammy knows, but he also knows that he has to try. Jack’s been a ghost story to everyone but Sammy for years now – he won’t let Ben become a ghost story, too.  


End file.
